Klay

A discursive parenting mobile application.

Klay is a mobile phone application that lets parents play with their children remotely. It is a Discursive design project that tries to bring about a discussion on mobile phone usage, parenting, and how both are intertwined in this modern day and age. We try to focus on how children and parents have access to communication devices in this present day and age, and how these devices can be used and misused. Our video represents a prototype designed not to become a reality but to encourage discussion about the aforementioned issues. It showcases a few ways Klay can be used to raise your children through your phone without being present as a parent.

The video was posted familjeliv.se, a Swedish biggest forum for parents, where we pretended to be Shauna Frenonsa, a mother with two children. She asked fellow parents for advice if the new application Klay was a good tool to play with her children.

In a few days, over 300 different users had read the post and seen the video. Here are two examples of responses (translated from Swedish):

"Eh, this is totally absurd. Or have a misunderstood maybe?"

"Ok, hm no, is my answer. I had never got such an app. Or never used it if it already existed on my phone. It sounds so f****** absurd. If you don’t have time to socialize with your children irl, then maybe you should not even taken the time go get a child from the beginning."

However these were the kind of answers we were looking for, we rather wanted to create a discussion about parenting. mobile phones and technology. People got really angry, as seen in the comments, but it is still no discussion, but just opinions. We realized that it is hard to build up a discussion, specially on the internet but we are still pleased with the outcome as it did insite some strong emotions about the topic at hand.